


the things they left behind

by more_than_melody



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: F/M, Royai - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-19
Updated: 2021-03-19
Packaged: 2021-03-28 00:27:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30131199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/more_than_melody/pseuds/more_than_melody
Summary: Riza moves into her first apartment.
Relationships: Riza Hawkeye/Roy Mustang
Comments: 2
Kudos: 41





	the things they left behind

_Put your arms around somebody else_

_don't punish yourself_

_truth is like blood underneath your fingernails_

_and you don't wanna hurt yourself, looking too closely_

  
  


Looking Too Closely - Fink

* * *

  
  


  
  


“What's this, hmm?”

Riza looks up from where she's seated cross legged on the floor, crumpled newspaper and a handful of unpacked dishes stacked alongside her knee.

“What's what?” she asks. There's been plenty of that all afternoon – Riza has little memory of what she packed away in these boxes when she left for the desert. Still, the tone in Rebecca's voice this time is different. This is not a 'where do you want me to put this vase?' sort of question, or a 'Riza you have got to get some new underwear, is this really what you wear?' sort of question.

“This picture.”

Riza just tilts her head, raises her eyebrows. “What picture?”

Rebecca steps around several half unpacked boxes, holding out a piece of paper in her hand.

Not a piece of paper, a photograph.

Riza takes it and her breath comes short.

“Oh,” she says, trying to sound normal. “I didn't realize I still had that.”

Rebecca purses her lips. “Mhm.”

It is an old picture, taken the second summer Roy had stayed at the old house with her and her father. Her father hadn't taken it – of course not – but Roy had been instructed to send pictures home to his mother so he had talked their neighbor into taking several of the two of them. Somehow she had been left with this one.

Riza's hair was just a little longer then, curling under her ears along her round chin and his hair had been long too – in need of a haircut, so far from home. That's not what hits her – it's the expressions on their faces that feels so shocking, like the flick of a finger against a still healing bruise, bringing back an ache, sharper than she thought it would be after so long.

After so many other things.

“You look so happy,” Rebecca says. “Is that -”

Her friends voice falters and Riza forces a smile. “Yes, that's Roy -” She doesn't catch the slip of her tongue soon enough. It's still something she's getting used to, calling him by his rank rather than his first name but Rebecca doesn't say anything.

“And here I would have thought he came into this world looking like a kicked puppy,” Rebecca drawls.

“Yes, well.” Riza hands the photograph back. “Things were different then.”

“What should I do with it?”

Riza shrugs, turns back to the box of dishes she's been working through. “It's just an old picture Becca.”

Mercifully, Rebecca sets the picture aside and moves onto something else, slitting the tape on a new box in a riot of packing peanuts.

“Oh look at this!” she exclaims, pulling a long swath of something floral from the box.

“What?”

“Is this _your_ dress?”

“So it would seem,” Riza says dryly. “I can't imagine anyone else would have put it into my box.”

“We have got to do some shopping.”

The dress had belonged to her mother.

  
  


The sun is starting to sink, hanging heavy in the late afternoon sky when Rebecca emerges from the bedroom, more than a little disheveled, hair half falling out of her ponytail.

“Everything's hung up,” she says, pouring a glass of water from the tap. “At least, for as many hangers as you got.”

“Do I need more?” Riza is genuinely surprised.

“If you want to keep all those clothes – which I don't recommend, by the way - yes. I only hung about half.”

“Huh.” Pretty much the only things she's worn the last few years are practical by necessity – her uniform, the t-shirt and shorts she's wearing now. It's been months since she thought about wearing something like a dress, or a skirt. “I guess we'll have to go shopping,” she says. “Next weekend maybe.”

She shouldn't have kept so many things. It would have been better to come back to a clean slate, with nothing to remind her of life as it had been before.

Evening sun is pouring in the front window, the apartment baking even with every window propped open in hopes of tempting a breeze. Riza stands, stretching her legs, sweaty behind the knees and in the creases of her elbows.

“I need a break,” she says, bracing her hands on her hips and twisting, trying to alleviate some of the discomfort from sitting in one position for so long. Her shoulder only protests a little at the movement. It's a marked improvement from several weeks prior.

“And some air conditioning.” Rebecca fans herself with a fold of newspaper, moves to stand in front of the door out to the balcony.

Riza snorts. “This apartment isnt that fancy.”

“A fan then.”

“Sure. I'll pick one up tomorrow.”

Rebecca sits in the lone kitchen chair, redoing her ponytail so it actually lifts her hair off the back of her neck. “I'll order something for takeout and we can sit out on the balcony,” she says. “I know you're not going to take advantage of that view but someone ought to.”

Rebecca does order pizza and they work until it arrives, putting dishes away in the cupboards and sorting silverware in the drawer, wiping down the interior of the fridge in preparation for groceries tomorrow.

The balcony is out a sliding door in the kitchen, just big enough for two or three people to sit comfortably. There's no patio furniture or anything – Riza has almost no furniture at all yet, not a sofa or a kitchen table, let alone something for outside. So they sit, dangling legs between the twisted metal rails, the pizza box between them. The temperature is dropping as the sun sets, muggy summer heat giving way to something a little more comfortable.

Three stories below them is the parking lot, butting up to a stretch of green for tenants to walk their dogs – Rebecca has suggested she get one more than once over the course of the day – and beyond that is a line of trees separating the apartment from the shopfronts a street over. It's not exactly a forest, or a field, with room to run or a place to swim or berries to pick, but there's nothing in the city like that.

“I really would kill for this view,” Rebecca says. “You're so lucky.”

Riza shrugs. “You're closer to work. I'd prefer that.”

Rebecca rolls her eyes. “You would. We can trade if you want.”

They both laugh, Riza just a second behind Rebecca.

“I'm never going to know if we're really friends now, or if you only want to visit so you can use my balcony.”

“Both,” Rebecca says. “Always both.”

  
  


It's not until dark has fallen and bugs are swarming thickly around the light over the balcony that Rebecca gets up, stretching and cracking her back.

“I should get going,” she says. “Early morning tomorrow.”

“Me too,” Riza says. It's Sunday night and she has to be in the office at seven the following morning, her first day working in East City. It's going to be quite an adjustment for many reasons and she's been apprehensive about it all weekend. Today, with Rebecca here, has been a welcome reprieve from dwelling on that.

“Thanks for the help,” she says. “Couldn't have done it without you.”

“Damn right you couldn't have. Knowing you there would be a single plate and bowl unpacked and the rest would stay in boxes for months.”

“I'm not that bad,” Riza says.

She is though. It's hard for her to feel a sense of ownership about any of this – the space, the dishes, the address. Rebecca helped her scrounge up most of the home goods – particularly the kitchen items – collecting things from friends who were giving them away and taking her shopping when she did need something new.

It isn't like Riza knows what she would need for her own apartment. She hadn't had much growing up, and then years in the dorms and years in Ishval had required very little in the way of personal belongings.

“It's a nice place, Rize,” Rebecca says, her expression serious. “Don't slack off getting it furnished or I'll be back to do the job properly.”

Riza smiles. “Thanks,” she says again, more warmly. She's lucky to have a friend as good as Rebecca. She's not sure how much of the unboxing she would have been able to tackle today if it had been her alone.

“Tomorrow is gonna go great,” Rebecca says. “And if it doesn't, call me and I'll bring over some wine and you can vent about all the terrible people in your new office. God knows I'm sick of hearing about everyone I work with.”

The smile on her face feels more genuine now, relaxed a little.

“I'll have plenty to tell, I'm sure.”

Riza stays out on the balcony a while longer after Rebecca leaves, listening to the faint voices of people walking in the grass below her, the buzzing of insects and the little tinks of moths, their tiny bodies colliding with the glass of the porch light. She rises to turn the light off, settles back down in the dark as the evening breeze drifts like a ghost over her bare arms and legs, her neck.

It is a nice view, she's forced to admit, with the moon rising over the treeline and the sky clear overhead. She can still see some of the stars, if not as clearly as she would like. Crickets are rustling in the grass along the parking lot but the sound is softer than she'd like, laid over by the sound of traffic from the street and -

At least it's not the violence in the air of a war zone, the rush of flames or the crackle of alchemy through the night accompanied by an explosion.

It's still a big adjustment.

From inside the house she hears the phone ring, the peal splitting the night. She starts, her heart stalling for a second. The phone rings again.

Riza gets to her feet, a little stiff from sitting still so long. She goes inside, leaving the glass door open but shutting the screen behind her. She flicks on the kitchen light and the sudden flare is too bright after the dark outside. There's a second where she almost turns it back off.

“Hello?” she asks, answering the phone.

“Hello.” It's Roy's voice on the other end of the line, instantly recognizable.

“Oh, it's you.”

He pauses for a second. “Were you expecting someone else?” he asks.

“No, no,” she says, quick to reassure him. “I figured it was Rebecca, thinking she left something here.”

“Ah.”

Another pause.

“I meant to call earlier this weekend,” he says. It's been nearly two weeks since they've spoken – space she needed. “I just – well, I wanted to make sure you were settling in alright. I hope it's not too late, I'm sure you're tired -”

“I am,” she says. “Settling in, that is.” Tired too, but talking on the phone is a better alternative than trying to go to sleep in an apartment that still feels very empty despite the number of boxes stacked and upacked inside it. She sits on the only chair – a single orphan with no dining table to accompany it yet. She crosses one ankle over her knee, tugging to adjust the phone cord so it's comfortable.

“That's good to hear.”

“Mhm.”

“Is it a nice apartment?”

“Rebecca thinks so. I don't really have a good frame of reference to say if that's true or if she's just being nice.”

“I see.”

They both know she's never lived some place like this. This is nothing like the home she had growing up or any of the places she's lived since, in so many ways she's not really sure how to feel. There are things she misses.

Not many, though.

“It's weird,” she admits. “Having this much space.”

It's more space than she's ever had to herself and she has no idea what to do with it.

“I know exactly what you mean. It feels like way too much for one person.”

There's something in his voice, saying that, that strikes a chord within her, lingers in the air.

A glance at her watch. It's only 21:30.

“Would you -” She hesitates for a second, then spits out the whole question before she can change her mind. “Would you want to come over?”

“Now?” He sounds more surprised than she'd like but she's already made the offer.

“Sorry, I know it's ridiculous -” It's not like she's not going to be able to sleep anyway, not well, at least and if he's feeling as out of place as she is -

“Not at all,” he says. “Are you sure it's not too late? I don't want to keep you up.”

“I'm going to be up either way,” she says.

She gives him the address.

 _Her_ address.

  
  


The picture Rebecca had found so interesting earlier is still on top of the box where she left it and Riza takes it in her hands, looks at it again.

They look so young here. They were young, she tells herself. It's not just an illusion – she was barely thirteen and he was not yet sixteen. They had been friends then, or as close to it as she had known at the time. Lonely and isolated.

Still, there are genuine smiles on those young faces. It's the field behind the house, the grass thigh high on both of them. There's a little smudge of blue on Roy's cheek – they had probably been picking berries. The whole scene is like a slice of sunlight, a glimpse of a past that seems lifetimes ago these days.

If only they had known. If they had known what was coming after, would they have made different choices?

Yes, she thinks. Yes.

Had there really been another choice for her? she wonders. She's wondered it so often over the last two years – normally it's an easier question to sit with than it feels right now, looking at this picture of two children, blissfully ignorant of their own futures.

Before the tattoo, before the flame, before the war.

  
  


There's a quiet knock on her front door.

Her front door, which she unlocks. _Hers_.

He's standing there in the dark of the walkway – she hadn't thought to turn on a light. She stands aside to let him in, light from inside spilling over the threshold. In the distance, the sound of an emergency vehicle siren, the slam of a car door.

“I don't have any furniture,” she says, half an apology.

He laughs a little. “Me either.”

He's dressed casually, in a plain grey t-shirt and pants, neither of which seem quite like they fit right – the shirt is loose, the pants a half inch too short. She smiles a little. It helps to know that she's not the only one who has returned from the desert to a life she doesn't fit quite into anymore.

He sits on the chair in the kitchen after moving a stack of empty boxes out of the way. The light overhead seems a little softer now, the whir of bugs outside familiar to all the late summer nights they spent in the kitchen at the old house.

“I don't have any food either, and just water if you want something to drink.”

Really, she might have thought this through a little better.

“Water is fine.”

At least the water from the tap is cold and clean. She runs the faucet, fills two glasses. She holds one out to him, her shoulder protesting a little at the reach.

He notices of course.

“How is -”

“It's fine,” she says, a little shortly. “Better than you expected.” Beneath her shirt the burns on her shoulder are almost entirely healed, as much as they're going to at least.

“Oh. That's good.”

She sits on the counter, legs dangling halfway down the cupboards. She sips at her water. The silence stretches between the two of them, not uncomfortable, exactly.

Their eyes meet over the lip of her glass and her mouth goes dry. His dark eyes drop to the glass in his own hands. He's gotten a haircut recently, clean and sharp, like a fresh start.

“Rebecca helped me unpack a lot of this stuff,” she says, eager to break the tension. “I need furniture before I can do much more.”

“That was me last weekend,” he admits. “I didn't realize how many things I'd left behind.”

He's not the only one.

  
  


Are they friends now? She's not sure. So much has passed between them that it's hard to know if she considers him a friend, but certainly he's something like a security blanket, like she's a kid clinging to the last trace of childhood for comfort.

The night draws on, nearing midnight. They make each other laugh, a small miracle. It is such a comfort knowing that she doesn't have to pretend things are normal, that all of this dysphoria isn't hers alone. Rebecca's consistency and companionship are helpful, truly. But it helps in a very different to know that Roy is struggling to acclimate as well. He seems to understand that without her having to say it.

He talks about the office too, and the people she will be working with, as though trying to set her at ease – not that she's mentioned her apprehension to him. How he's picked up on it is beyond her.

“It's air conditioned,” he adds. “Even if it is on the fourth floor.”

Riza, who knows that Rebecca's office is in an older wing of the building that is absolutely not air conditioned, smiles.

She doesn't show him the picture. There is no going back – only this, and whatever happens from here.

Eventually it's late enough that her eyes are scratchy with the need to sleep. Her nerves have faded enough that she might actually be able to.

He glances around, checks his wrist for a watch he's not wearing.

“I don't own a clock,” she says. Another thing to add to Rebecca's extensive shopping list. “It's almost midnight though.”

He runs a hand through his hair. “I should go. You look exhausted.”

She gives him a look that says _so do you_. He shrugs, giving her a lopsided smile.

  
  


“You can stay, if you like.”


End file.
